Samsung's New TVs Are Almost Invisible (qz.com)

Mike Murphy reports via Quartz of Samsung's new top-of-the-line televisions announced at an event in New York today: Samsung's new QLED line of 4K TVs features a technology the company is calling "Ambient Mode." Before you mount the TV, you'll snap a picture of the wall it's going to hang on -- it doesn't matter if it's brick, wood, patterned wallpaper, or just a white wall -- and then after it's up, you can set that picture as the TV's background. The result is something that looks like a floating black rectangle mounted on a wall. Samsung even includes a digital version of the shadow this black rectangle would cast on the wall, as if there really wasn't a large LED panel sitting in the middle of the thin metal strips. There are five QLED models, with minor tweaks between them, ranging in size from 49 inches, up to an absolutely massive 88 inches. The televisions have a built-in timer so that the ambient setting will turn off after a while, in order to spare your electricity bill. Viewing the televisions before Samsung's event, the ambient really did appear to blend them into the walls at first blush. One, against a fake brick wall, was indistinguishable from what was behind it until you really got close up to the screen. The distinction on another, attempting to mimic a painted off-white wall, was a little more obvious. But that's not really the point -- the mode is just intended to give the illusion of invisibility between watching TV, and when you want to show off your new television to a visitor. Pricing isn't available but you can expect them to range from a few thousands dollars all the way up to $20,000 for the largest, sharpest models. Samsung also announced that it's partnering with The Weather Channel, The New York Times, and others to overlay content on the ambient TVs. They will also be able to control any smart device that can control to Samsung's SmartThings system, like Amazon Echoes, Ring doorbells, and Philips Hue Lights. Bixby is baked into the remote to help you search for content and cater to commands.

Comments

PSA: "QLED" is a con

[elrous0]

The name is meant to imply that it's comparable to OLED technology, but the reality is that it's just regular old LED technology. It IS NOT anywhere nearly as good as real OLED. And only LG makes *real* OLEDs, not Samsung.

Re:PSA: "QLED" is a con

[Inviska]

QLED is a con, but for entirely different reasons than you state. Samsung where extremely light on details when they introduced their QLED televisions, but questioning by AV sites revealed that these are not electroluminescent quantum dot displays, but are in fact LCD displays with a quantum dot backlight. It's a lot like Samsung's so called LED displays, that are again just LCD displays with an LED backlight. There's no denying that these quantum dot LCDs are a significant improvement over standard LCD, but they still possess many of the drawbacks of LCD, and to market them as quantum dot displays is misleading.

Companies are working on true electroluminescent quantum dot displays, with BOE being the first to demonstrate prototypes. There are some pictures here, and another article here. There's a video somewhere but I can't find it right now. Digitimes reported that Samsung have prototype electroluminescent quantum dot displays that they have not yet shown publicly, and other Chinese manufacturers besides BOE are working on the technology.

It still looks like its a good few years before we'll see commercial electroluminescent quantum dot displays, and micro-LED displays may have taken off by then. I'm still waiting for a decent computer monitor. It is insane that nearly 20 years later you still can't get a monitor that comes close to the Sony GPD-FW900.

Re:Energy

[bws111]

You have to read all the way to the 5th sentence to see that there is a timer that turns it off.

Re: Energy

[ShanghaiBill]

If I had $20k to burn on a TV, I'd buy a used one on Craigslist for $500 ...

Have you checked TV prices lately? For $500 you can get a pretty darn good brand new TV. Costco has a 55" inch 4K UHD TV for $420.